The Hindu Business Line : <I>Measuring happiness </I>

Tuesday's newspapers carried a report that proclaimed that young Indians were among the happiest people on the planet. Not only this, they were also among the most religious. Clearly, this is happy news. It contradicts the general belief that youth everywhere are unsatisfied and rebellious; turns out they are quite the opposite, the tempting inference being that one can relate to them more easily than was thought possible.

In terms of statistics, the MTV Networks International's new `well being Index' found that the happiness of Indian youth was in line with "the happy, well-adjusted attitudes evinced by world leaders on the youthful joy scale," namely, Argentinians and Mexicans.

In terms of figures, the index found 60 per cent of 16-to-34-year-old Indians happy, and the corresponding figure for Argentina was 70 per cent. The youth in Japan were found to be the most miserable lot with only eight per cent claiming to be happy and, importantly, as much as 76 per cent stating that they had no religious bearing at all. In the West, fewer than 30 per cent of American youth and 50 per cent in Britain said they were happy with the way things were.

Money and happiness

The first thing that strikes one is the lack of correspondence between "perceived happiness" and one's material well-being, the latter being far more preponderant in countries such as Japan, the US and Britain than in the developing world. This of course is old hat to people of the Orient who have always held that their "quality of inner life" is superior.

Indeed, if the universe of the study is shifted to the poor countries themselves, it will be found (as it has been) that village life to village people is very often far `happier' (in terms of one's own perception) than urban life is to urban people. One is not going into the reasons here — which are far more complex than one can imagine — but merely focusing on the observed phenomenon that happiness and contentment in human terms have precious little to do with, say, what money can buy.

As someone associated with the survey has said: "You can shop in Mumbai stores that are similar to those in London, but you still have very different ideas and ways of looking at the world."

Religion and youth

The second point of interest is the "religious" accoutrement of happiness among youth identified by the MTV study, the suggestion being that religion or a religious bent of mind has a positive connection with happiness. This perhaps is an even more complex issue than the "link" between wealth and happiness, its history stretching back to the early days of "civilization".

So what does it mean when you have a World Youth Day? Is it just a celebration of the lives and aspirations that fall within a particular age-group, or is there something really homogeneous about "youth" — representing a category, a concept — which transcends national barriers? The MTV survey provides food for thought here, one of its many findings being that while more than 90 per cent of German youth feel that globalisation is ruining their culture, 63 per cent of their Indian counterparts say it is a good thing.

Ranabir Ray Choudhury

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